Hello everyone,

This is my first post on Gunetwork (except for my introduction), so first and foremost, I want to introduce myself. I'm a little time modder looking to improve myself with a few basic replacement mods, levelled lists edits etc, in order to join up with a Fallout 4 rewritting project.

My problem : I am working on a feral ghoul overhaul that would transform them into discarded Synths. For that, I need to change their appearance from feral ghoul to Dima.

I understood that I need to transfer the bones weight of the feral ghoul skeleton to Dima's body through Outfitstudio, export the .nif and replace the original feral ghoul ones with it. I tried using the skeleton from the mod "feral ghouls converted to human zombies", since it has the standard humanoid proportions, but it doesn't seem to work.

Everytime I try, the .nif is distorted and acts like some kind of non-euclidian creature from hell when it moves.

Could somebody please help me ?

Thanks in advance and merry christmas to everybody!

Once you copied the bone weights, did you select the body nif(s), set base shape, then conform selected, then conform all?

Spoiler:

By the way...welcome to GUN. The flu has me forgetting my manners

Hi, thanks for the welcome and the help!
I did select the nifs, set base shape, conform selected and conform all, but it still doesn't work. I posted a quick video to show the process, it'd be easier to find what's wrong this way :

The Dima body isn't in the same position as the glowing ghoul one, I know. When I move the Dima body to conform the other, it ends up with an even worse looking abomination, something straight of a Lovecraftian nightmare.
Thing is, when I export the .nif with properties, the head seems to be rigged alright, just not the rest. It's my first time trying to rig something, so there's probably an amateur mistake I can't see yet.

I'm using the mod "Augmentation" by Crimsonrider for the Dima body, and "Feral Ghouls converted to Human Zombies" by lazman555, since his glowing one .nif has bone weights that are apparently adjusted for a standard humanoid shape.

If you have any idea, I'll gladly take it because I'm a bit lost.

@mithrap - You had me laughing pretty hard at the video! I've often said laughing at our own fails is true survival.....before we toss the whole kit across the room

I have run into this same exact thing and the solution eluded me until I saw this:



For some reason when .nifs don't line up in the OS window this works to line them up, do your work ie. copy bone weights or any other reference and then BEFORE you save....move them back to the original position. Then save the whole nif. It will still show up as two separated nifs in OS when you load it the next time, but in game (I'm assuming in creation kit as well) it shows up as a single working coordinated piece.

I don't know why it works, but it originates from the Outfit Studio author. Here's a link to the discord server from the nexus page https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/25?tab=posts

Here's what it looks like in OS with an misaligned nif I've worked with:

Spoiler:

I hope that works for you the way it did for me.

Haha, yes, I try to see the funny side of it instead of the frustration.

Applying the lining up fix didn't do the job unfortunately, even if it looks a little bit less like a distorted nightmare. I made it look a little better with a wider search radius / Vertex Targets when applying the bone weights (the creature finally found its own hands now...), but it's still not usable in game as it is. The torso area is extremely long whereas the legs are shaped like ram's hoofs, and glitch at every step...

In the end, I wonder if the feral ghoul skeleton isn't simply too chaotic and messed up for Outfit Studio to handle. It would be much easier to simply replace the feral's race to synth, but it would be at the cost of loosing their animations, which is precisely what I'd like to keep...

I'm sure that there is a way though. But I still have much to learn about rigging, I'm afraid.

Rigging is definitely not my specialty....maybe you can find the answer you need on the discord. I'd be very interested to see if it can even be done in OS.

Okay, I finally found a way !
Turns out, two problems were there : I was moving the reference mesh towards the nifs, when I should have done the contrary. Secondly, I didn't have a wide enough search radius / Vertex Targets when applying the bone weights.

Once I fixed these issues, it turned out perfectly fine.
I did a quick poorly made video to show what it looks like ingame :



Thank you so much for the advices, they really helped me !

mithrap wrote:

Okay, I finally found a way !
Turns out, two problems were there : I was moving the reference mesh towards the nifs, when I should have done the contrary. Secondly, I didn't have a wide enough search radius / Vertex Targets when applying the bone weights.

Thank you so much for the advices, they really helped me !

Outstanding!!! Glad you got it figured out and shared here for future +rep Well done!